Dirk Gently (2010)

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

This live action production of Douglas Adams' book is an excellent example of taking source material and turning into a new thing. The show retained all of it's original harmony with the original themes and added to them in a very enjoyable way.If you look at the low scoring reviews, you'd be forgiven for thinking this would be a badly done production. But that's not the case. The reviewers are simply forgetting that all new works are derivative and if we were to be truly faithful we could just have an hour of teletext showing pages from the book instead.The story is holistically interconnected with the modern world (which Adams' loved) and the original stories. A perfect adaptation.

As far as it goes, the pilot episode really only seemed to have skimmed over elements of the books. It felt as if they picked things out, like time machines, the names, a mystery about cats, and Dirk's refrigerator argument.The major problem for this series is that it shouldn't relate to Dirk Gently at all. Though Adams was a big proponent of his work (book, TV, radio) never being the same, there were always elements connected them. Even if characters were portrayed differently by looks alone, they always had something connecting them back to the original incarnation.Dirk Gently doesn't do that, with exception to the title character. Gordon Way (though minor in appearance) is no longer the owner of successful WayForward, and he isn't the brother of Susan Way (who ceased to exist). He's a heartbroken rich man with a time machine who is trying to get back to Susan but ultimately fails. Nothing about the original Gordon remains except his name, status of wealth, and that he works with computers (except he was described in TV as "obsessed with," and that ultimately was MacDuff's personality in the book).Richard MacDuff is a polar opposite to himself. In the book, he's forgetful and slightly absentminded, haphazard, and more cautious toward Dirk. He's employed by Gordon. When he phones Susan, he makes apologies to and plans with her answering machine. Later, he breaks in and steals the tape. Not so for the show! MacDuff comes off as impulsively rude and a bit stupid. The best example for that is the very beginning. He's caught by Dirk burgling his own home to steal his girlfriend's laptop because he wants to break into her email to delete a scathing break-up message. Also, he's unemployed.Susan takes on an entirely new character and nothing except her first name and relationship to MacDuff is recognisable. Literally everything is different, including her last name and occupation.That is the main problem. There is nothing recognisable, nothing left of Adams' characters. For that, I give it an exceptionally low score.HOWEVER, had they renamed everyone and made it truly "inspired by" the book by taking the concept rather than butchering the characters completely, it would have been a wonderful stand alone. Another idea would be that they should have left out the stories entirely of everyone who wasn't Dirk and made an entirely new idea. There were so many avenues they could've taken, and they took the one that was easiest rather than exceptional.

I've been a long time fan of all things Adamsy, slightly disappointed with the movie version of HGTTG, somehow i expected it to be better than the TV series in relation to the extra amount spent, so i was wondering what they'd done with this.I already knew this was going to follow the characters but not the actual story line of the book.In the end i thought they pulled it off pretty well. Mangan is well cast as Dirk, it's all rather quirky, Dirk comes across as a total charlatan just as i imagined him from the books.I wonder if they'll make a series? I hope so. Keep it short so you don't run out of ideas and lets hope they make a better job of trying to recreate Douglas sense of humour than Eoin Colfer did with 'And Another Thing'

This thing was made by people who never read the Dirk Gently books, but were told the plot by someone who only vaguely remembers it, and then decided that they didn't like it much and could do better anyway.The actors look and behave nothing like they are described by Douglas Adams, some of the best parts are cut out, and there's no trace of the general eerie - quirky feeling that is so great in the books.I admit that I didn't manage to watch more than fifteen minutes of the thing, it was depressing to me, since I'd been waiting and hoping to see my favorite Douglas Adams books dramatized for ages. But the little i did manage to endure was an insult to Adams' memory and talent. I wish they could've resisted the temptation to ruin Dirk Gently for everyone.